About this product: Parker Posey Reviews The Kids Are All Right
Parker Posey's films include Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Clockwatchers, Party Girl, and You've Got Mail. Read her exclusive Amazon guest review of The Kids Are All Right:
As adults, the Welches have remembered the past as they did when they were children, giving us a window into the survival meachanisms of personality, of the the capacity to undergo huge blows of fate, of the manifestations of surviving that fate--and the soulful bonding of siblings to regenerate what was lost. This book carried me along with such speed and emotion and intimacy that I felt cast in the role as their imaginary friend. This book is their song and it will rock you along.--Parker Posey
More from The Kids Are All Right: Pictures of the Welches
About this product: Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman expose the fallacies of standard management thinking in First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently. In seven chapters, the two consultants for the Gallup Organization debunk some dearly held notions about management, such as "treat people as you like to be treated"; "people are capable of almost anything"; and "a manager's role is diminishing in today's economy." "Great managers are revolutionaries," the authors write. "This book will take you inside the minds of these managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and reveal the new truths they have forged in its place."
The authors have culled their observations from more than 80,000 interviews conducted by Gallup during the past 25 years. Quoting leaders such as basketball coach Phil Jackson, Buckingham and Coffman outline "four keys" to becoming an excellent manager: Finding the right fit for employees, focusing on strengths of employees, defining the right results, and selecting staff for talent--not just knowledge and skills. First, Break All the Rules offers specific techniques for helping people perform better on the job. For instance, the authors show ways to structure a trial period for a new worker and how to create a pay plan that rewards people for their expertise instead of how fast they climb the company ladder. "The point is to focus people toward performance," they write. "The manager is, and should be, totally responsible for this." Written in plain English and well organized, this book tells you exactly how to improve as a supervisor. --Dan Ring
Following a circle of family and friends through the course of a day from morning till night, this book affirms the importance of all things great and small in our world, from the tiniest shell on the beach, to warm family connections, to the widest sunset sky
Legendary auto executive Lee Iacocca has a question for every American: Where have all the leaders gone?
The most widely recognized business executive of all time asks the tough questions that America's leaders must address:
• What is each of us giving back to our country?
• Do we truly love democracy?
• Are we too fat and satisfied for our own good?
• Why is America addicted to oil?
• Do we really care about our children's futures?
• Who will save the middle class?
A self-made man who many Americans once wished would run for president, Iacocca saved the Chrysler Corporation from financial ruin, masterminded the creation of the minivan, and oversaw the renovation of Ellis Island. Since then he has created the Iacocca Institute for leadership at Lehigh University and the Iacocca Foundation, which funds research for a cure for diabetes. Lee Iacocca believes that leaders are made in times of crisis -- such as today. He has known more leaders than almost anyone else -- among them nine U.S. presidents, many heads of state, and the CEOs of the nation's top corporations -- and is uniquely suited to share his wisdom, knowledge, and wit about the leadership of America.
Author of the gigantic number one bestsellers Iacocca: An Autobiography and Talking Straight, Lee Iacocca famously doesn't mince words and offers his no-nonsense, straight-up assessments of the American politicians most likely to run for president in 2008, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, and John Edwards.
Confessing that he has "flunked retirement," Iacocca calls on citizens of all ages to vote, get involved, and choose our leaders carefully. Along the way, he shares stories about the prominent people he's met and known, including the time he smoked cigars with Fidel Castro, what Bob Hope told him about how to live a long life, what Lady Sarah Ferguson said to him as they danced, why Bill Clinton woke him up in Italy, what Robert McNamara taught him about success, how Frank Sinatra sang for him personally, and whom Pope John Paul II asked him to pray for. We learn what he discussed with Warren Buffett, DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche, Ronald Reagan, Senator John Kerry, Congressman John Murtha, Prince Charles and Camilla, former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, rapper Snoop Dogg, financier Kirk Kerkorian, Ted Turner, Bob Dole, and many more.
Knowing that the times are urgent, the iconic leader shares his lessons learned and issues a call to action to summon Americans back to their roots of hard work, common sense, integrity, generosity, and optimism.
About this product: Melissa Gray is National Public Radio's Cake Lady. Every Monday she brings a cake to the office for her colleagues at NPR to enjoy. Hundreds of Mondays (and cakes) later, Melissa has lots of cake-making tips to share. With more than 50 recipes for the cakes that have been dreamed of and drooled over for a lifetime including Brown Sugar Pound Cake, Peppermint and Chocolate Rum Marble Cake, Lord and Lady Baltimore Cakes, Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake, and Honey Buttercream and Apricot Jam Cake All Cakes Considered is an essential addition to every baker's library.
Part memoir and part education (or lack thereof), The Know-It-All chronicles NPR contributor A.J. Jacobs's hilarious, enlightening, and seemingly impossible quest to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica from A to Z.
To fill the ever-widening gaps in his Ivy League education, A.J. Jacobs sets for himself the daunting task of reading all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His wife, Julie, tells him it's a waste of time, his friends believe he is losing his mind, and his father, a brilliant attorney who had once attempted the same feat and quit somewhere around Borneo, is encouraging but unconvinced.
With self-deprecating wit and a disarming frankness, The Know-It-All recounts the unexpected and comically disruptive effects Operation Encyclopedia has on every part of Jacobs's life -- from his newly minted marriage to his complicated relationship with his father and the rest of his charmingly eccentric New York family to his day job as an editor at Esquire. Jacobs's project tests the outer limits of his stamina and forces him to explore the real meaning of intelligence as he endeavors to join Mensa, win a spot on Jeopardy!, and absorb 33,000 pages of learning. On his journey he stumbles upon some of the strangest, funniest, and most profound facts about every topic under the sun, all while battling fatigue, ridicule, and the paralyzing fear that attends his first real-life responsibility -- the impending birth of his first child.
The Know-It-All is an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.
About this product: Anyone who's been to a high school or college has noted how students of the same race seem to stick together. Beverly Daniel Tatum has noticed it too, and she doesn't think it's so bad. As she explains in this provocative, though not-altogether-convincing book, these students are in the process of establishing and affirming their racial identity. As Tatum sees it, blacks must secure a racial identity free of negative stereotypes. The challenge to whites, on which she expounds, is to give up the privilege that their skin color affords and to work actively to combat injustice in society.
Travis and his sister, Corey, can't resist a good trick. When they learn that their grandmother's quiet Vermont inn, where they're spending the summer, has a history of ghost sightings, they decide to do a little "haunting" of their own. Before long, their supernatural pranks have tourists flocking to the inn, and business booms.
But Travis and Corey soon find out that they aren't the only ghosts at Fox Hill Inn. Their thoughtless games have awakened something dangerous, something that should have stayed asleep. Can these siblings lay to rest the ghosts they’ve stirred?
About this product: A wry literary masterpiece, God Hates Us All is a coming-of-age tale for the apathetic generation. Hank Moody's self-loathing yet darkly likeable narrator is a college drop-out-turned-accidental-drug-dealer enveloped in a world of contradictions. His boss -- a bong-hitting, dreadlocked Pontiff figure -- runs a remarkably organized and ingenious illegal trade patronized by, among others, a sweater-set-wearing Upper East Sider, a Wall Street hotshot, and a wannabe rock star with a hard-to-resist model girlfriend. The lonely narrator yearns for more than the tenuous but intimate thread he shares with his clients. To escape his mother's desperate expectations, his father's endless disappointments, and his certifiably insane ex-girlfriend, he moves to the city's mecca of ambitious slackers -- the Chelsea Hotel -- where the pursuit of lust (and the rock star's girlfriend) sends him on a series of well-intentioned misadventures that lead him right back where he started. Told in a unique and subtle voice, God Hates Us All is ironic, optimistic, and unforgettable.